Concentration and deconcentration of Finnish population by age groups in 1975–1995

Abstrakti

The researchers can find several ideas and methods which favor development tendencies either in urban centers or in periphery. There are ideas which favor the hierarchical structures as the result of development and accordingly lead to even possible divergence of income per capita levels if not the migration helps the equalization of incomes. The scale and agglomeration economies and technological advancement connected to new capital and service industries will benefit large cities (Isard 1956). According to Thirlwall (1994) the principle of circular and cumulative causation is based on the existence of increasing returns in the widest sense. Some researchers have found unrealistic development expectations concerning weak and backward regions (Begg 1992, Amin et al. 1992, Mancha 1991). Also there are researchers who argue that the regional growth forms the mosaic pattern which changes its form according to the local activities and circumstances (Illeris 1995, Stainle 1992, Andersen et al. 1992). Tervo et al. (1994) has found the mosaic pattern when small regions are used.

The data for this study is collected from the population data of Statistics Finland and consists municipal populations by age group in 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995. There are now 452 municipalities. For this paper we are using the terminology of “spatial unit” to indicate either Functional Urban Region (FUR) or municipality (Note 1). The geographical size of cities has gradually increased as the consequence of combining the neighboring rural municipalities to the city. There are 433 spatial units in this study. The FURs are defined only for six largest cities and their urbanized, commuting ring in the southern and south-western parts of Finland. The part of Finland where the most of FURs locate has more than 50 % of total population.

The point of view is the national urban system of the country. The spatial units are expected to give a special information about urbanization process of the most urbanized regions in Finland. By
investigating the location of people in five year intervals we try to reveal the relative attractiveness of spatial units. Since the data is on the national system of all cities and municipalities it is possible to investigate and compare the growth of population in different aggregations, i.e. the system of centers and its complementary system (Notes 2–3).